Gratitude to myself

     I've debated writing here again so many times, and each time I thought how much work it took to write and draw each post here, and decided other things in life took priority. Also, looking back, I feel like a good chunk of this blog was trying to explain myself and/or write to make others happy, neither of which I want to do now. So to anyone reading this, or maybe just to myself, things before/after now have changed. Without further ado, here's what prompted me to resume:

     When I was young, I decided I wanted to grow old gracefully, and develop smile lines instead of frown lines. There are times I've fallen into fear of aging, fear of no longer being attractive, but the more I meet other older people with crows feet and big grins, the less I worry about those things. I am so grateful I made the decision to be happy, and worked hard to be where I am today. 

Working from home:

      Had a conversation with my dad yesterday about the pandemic and staying at home. He claims to be an introvert, but he requires far more social interaction than I do. Our discussion about how the work-from-home situation due the pandemic is going prompted this:

Bedtime

      Over the years, I have painstakingly established a bedtime routine optimized to get my brain to shut up and go to sleep as expeditiously as possible. It involves taking a shower at a certain time, singing calming songs in said shower, having a filling dessert so I don't wake up hungry at 2am, and controlling the ambient levels of sound, light, and temperature during this process to encourage restfulness. Magnesium supplements are involved on scheduled days, and the gentleman is kind enough to support all this by keeping things quiet when it's dessert time, even if he's staying up later. 

Why people hate insurance companies

     In early October, I received a letter from my insurance company asking for documentation to support an insurance claim from a visit in May. Annoying, but more annoying because it was a yearly checkup at a practice that I'd been to the year before - also for a yearly checkup, also coded in plain English on the claim as a yearly checkup - that they'd contested and I'd proven was covered. But, bureaucracy, so ok, I gather the documents and send an email as requested on October 24th, well within their 45 day response time.

     No acknowledgement of receipt, no response.

     Two weeks pass, the deadline to submit passes...

Exercise goals

     In 2017, I somewhat randomly picked a physical fitness goal to hit by 2019: to do a pike-to-handstand (link). I keep seeing it done in "people are awesome" youtube videos, which I watch occasionally as an end-of-day feel-good mood booster, and they look amazing. I found a couple sites that broke it down into separate parts, and I've been working on them as part of my regular workouts.

     In a similar vein, NerdFitness, the geeky website I use for fitness information, released a "Rings and Handstands" pack that takes you step-by-step on how to do things like handstands, handstand push-ups, ring L-sits, ring muscle-ups, and ring front levers. It was half off, as an introductory price, so I went for it, and have been working my way through some of the progressions there, as well, since many of them target the same muscles and skills as pike-to-handstands.

Being strong

      When I first got the urge to get in better shape, I searched to see what was available nearby. The first thing that caught my eye was parkour, because it encourages free movement, running, jumping, and generally being a kid again, playing out in the woods. At the time, parkour gyms were less prevalent than they are now, but there was one in my town, and offering adult classes. I contacted them, and they said the prereq for doing parkour was to show I could do: 50 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, and 50 pull-ups at one go. So that was right out (hint, I still can't do that). Instead, I joined Irish dance, and had a wonderful time getting in better cardio shape and kicking my shins black and blue.

     Unfortunately, when I graduated and moved to the east coast, I was unable to find another Irish dance team that I really liked. I mooched around feeling sorry for myself for a while, then I stumbled onto this website called NerdFitness, which attempts to break down exercise and being healthy into gaming and "nerd" concepts. The posts were awesome, bridging the nerd/jock gap, the community was hugely supportive, and I was frankly sick of doing more and more cardio workouts with less and less result, so I gave it a try. When I first tried the beginner's bodyweight workout, I could barely do two sets of a few squats, lunges, knee push-ups, dumbbell rows and planks. Nevertheless, I persisted, and was very proud when I was able to do a third set, and then started adding weights.

     In September of 2015, I managed to fracture my ankle while ungracefully walking down stairs. For two months, I could not work out at all, and then pushed to get into physical therapy (pt), get walking, and try to better than before. I've always brushed off my bruises and running into walls as just clumsiness, but pt taught me that it was poor flexibility and strength that made me clumsy. Here I was, 35 years old, and injured walking down stairs because I was too out of shape to avoid damaging myself. If I'm aiming to live past 100, this is not a sustainable plan.

     Although strength training at home through an online forum is great, it's not the same as getting in-person training and social time, so once again, I looked around to see what was available. This time, I found a parkour place not too far away that had zero pre-reqs: come in and try it out. I stalled for a bit, looking for someone to go with on the scary first endeavor, but once I finally went... I was hooked. Since so very many things can go wrong in parkour, the focus of training is safety first. First you learn how to fail out of a move, then you learn the move. Can't do the move yet? Here are the steps to work up to it. Everyone get in line, do the variation you can do safely. Go.

     I've been doing parkour now for a little over a year. When I started, I was doing one hour, every other week, and barely able to do a lot of the moves. Now, I'm doing 3 hours, every weekend, and holding my own on quite a few of the moves. Still lots of room for improvement, but I've come a long way.

Move	February '16	May '17
Precision jumps	-	Tweaking form
Cat hang	A few seconds	Working on cat hang pull-ups
Cat leap	-	Tweaking form
Quadrupedal movement (QM)	A few seconds	30 seconds, balancing a bar on my back
Easy vault	2.5' vault box	3' vault box
Safety/speed vault	2.5' box, climb over	3' vault box, working on speed vault
Kong vault	-	Standing jump onto a 2.5' box
Parkour rolls	Working on form	Still working on form
Kip-up	-	Can kip-up into back bridge
Handstands	Against a wall	Hold for a few seconds, free-standing
Running laps	Less than 1	2 laps without stopping

     One of the classes that I take there is like a full-body pt course - we do flexibility and mobility work, and if something doesn't work right, the teacher explains why it hurts, what's probably going on in your body, and how to do exercises at home to fix it. In winter of 2016, I learned I have a partially torn rotator cuff. Between regular pt and the stuff we do at parkour, it is not an issue, and I'm still doing crazy-fun things that, two years ago, I wouldn't even consider doing. There are still some aches and pains of getting older, but I can touch my toes, run laps, do back bridges, fall and roll in any direction, climb up and jump down from 6' boxes, hop over railings, and just generally have fun with my environment. 100 years old, here I come. 

Accident and recovery

On September 10 of this year, I missed a step at work, fell, and messed up my foot. It hurt a lot, but I didn't think it was broken since I could still move my toes, so I made an appointment for the next afternoon and stayed home, following the RICE technique. Believe it or not, it took a week to get the results back, and only because I was calling literally every day- and then every hour- to ask why it was taking so long. Results: multiple chip fractures on the outer side of the ankle bones. Another 4 days went by before I could get to a podiatrist, who promptly put me in a walking boot and told me not to put any weight on it for at least 3 more weeks. After two weeks in ace bandages and not touching anything, I looked like a zombie sausage.

The doc wanted me in a knee-high boot, but apparently they only had low boots, which suited me fine cause the dang thing was still ridiculously heavy. I didn't get a picture, but in the last few days of not being able to put any weight on the foot, my "bad" calf was quite literally a half an inch larger than my good one, just from lugging that weight around. Thankfully, 4 weeks after the injury, I was able to start physical therapy.

Being sick

     Three weeks ago, I started getting a sinus infection.
     Two days in, it became apparent it would be a bad one, and I got medicine.
     That night, I realized I was one of the 12% that got insomnia as a side effect of the medicine.
     But if I didn't take it, I got headaches from the sinus pressure and couldn't breathe through my nose.
     Two weeks ago, my gentleman brought home the cold bug that's going around.
     And gave it to me.

     For two weeks, I slept less than one hour every night, usually on the couch, because I didn't want to wake my gentleman up (also because, once he got sick, he was snoring like a chainsaw). The first few days were the worst, because I kept hoping it would get better, or the other medicine I was taking to try to get some sleep would kick in, and I'd be able to pass out. After a while, though, it caught up to me, and I spent both days and nights in a mostly-coherent zombie state. I literally hated everything, living or dead, and had to move slowly in order to a) understand anything, b) not run into walls more than usual, and c) not start lashing out at things that really weren't the cause of my problems.

     A week ago, I felt well enough to just take the cold medicine, not the sinus stuff that was giving me insomnia. The first night, I slept for four hours, and life started looking better. My gentleman was still in the middle of being sick, though, so I was still mostly sleeping on the couch. By the middle of the week, I was sleeping for eight hours, and even ventured back onto the bed for some of that time. Finally, a couple nights ago, I was able to sleep not only all night long, but also all night long on the bed. And suddenly, literally overnight, my perspective changed.

     They say you get sick as a reminder to appreciate what you have when you're well. I have to say, sleep deprivation is a darn good way to realize that. There have been problems gnawing on my consciousness for a while now, and finally getting a good night's sleep helped put them in perspective. Sometimes, you just need a solid wake-up call (heh) to reorder your priorities. So while I'm not thrilled that I was so horribly sick and sleep-deprived, I'm glad I got things straightened out. And I really, really appreciate a good night's sleep now. Cheers!

48 hours

     Not two days ago, I had sat down to write a follow-up to Thursday's story of being sick. It was all about how I'd finally just faced the music, accepted that I was sick and took care of myself. I was very proud because I got tea, got aspirin and cough drops, and slept for like 20 hours straight. I wasn't happy about the fact that I was ill, but I was at least going to take care of myself.

     Today, however, I'm feeling both not as good, and yet better, after a mere 48 hours. Today was Navy Day- a celebration and remembrance of people who serve or have served in the Navy. We had heard that there was going to be a big parade to kick the day off, and then we could take tours of the boats, so Petra (my Croatian friend) and I got up at 9:30 and took the bus down to the river. We didn't see anything, though, so we walked across the bridge to the other side of the river, just in time to see them start breaking down grandstands and camera crews.

The Russian version of a news truck.

T minus 3 weeks

     This past Friday marked the three week point until I leave for the trip to the East coast and Russia, and it's slowly starting to hit me what exactly that means. As much as I complain that I'm bored, and I'm not working on my life goals right now, the last few weeks have been extremely restful, and have allowed me to focus on some things I've been ignoring, such as my attitude towards speaking Russian and my health goals. In just eighteen days, however, I will have much larger things to think about!

     Back in January, a friend from WoW got me started on a website to help lose weight and stay active. Between 2008 and 2010, I had gone from just over 200 lbs to 180 lbs, simply by cutting out sugar and snacks while I was gaming, but then I kinda got stuck at that weight. Irish dance was keeping me fairly fit, but I wasn't really paying that much attention to how much of certain things I was eating, and the fact that I wasn't really doing anything outside of Irish dance. When I started on this website though (www.myfitnesspal.com if you're interested), I got quite the wakeup call as to how much I was eating, and why I wasn't losing weight. In the last six months, I've lost a further ten pounds, and feel so much better, even to the point of not being out of breath at the end of some of our dances.

The countdown begins

     This past Friday marked the six week point until I leave on vacation/ the trip to Russia. In general terms this is not particularly important, but for me, six weeks is the point at which things become real. And unfortunately, the current situation means that things also become worrisome.

Yeah, that's about how I feel.

     Everyone has some sort of calendar in their heads, used to keep track of what's going on and when. Some people are better at this than others, though the prevalence of technology has made this less important than in the past. My calendar is broken down into, roughly, a weekly basis: this week and next week, "soon" (i.e., within the next six weeks or so), and "eventually" (more than six weeks out). If something definitely will happen that is in the "eventually" section, I put it on my calendar with an alert, because I know I will forget about it before it happens.

Compassion and attitude

     When I first moved out to Colorado, it was after roughly 25 years on the east coast, at least 15 of which had been in the DC area. I had learned how to drive on I-95, and most of my road trips had been through New York and New Jersey. Living in Northern Virginia, you can go from shotgun-toting, chickens-and-rusted-trucks-in-the-front-yard areas to million-dollar neighborhoods with security cameras and locked gates within a half an hour. Everyone keeps to themselves, and if you have to interact with others, it's best to establish a pecking order as quickly as possible, lest someone think you're just another hanger-on to the DC area.

     Moving out to the midwest was a massive culture shock, probably because I wasn't expecting it to be. When you go to another country, you expect things to be different- new language, new culture, new everything (except McDonald's and Starbucks). Moving across the country, however, I had expected things to be roughly the same ol same ol. Perhaps some new hobbies, different scenery, but America is a mixing pot- a homogenous society, right? Right?

In sickness and in health

NOTE: Due to time constraints from work and school, I will be dropping this down to one post a week on Mondays only. I would much rather have quality reflections and stories up here than rushing to get slipshod tales completed. Apologies, but life takes precedence. And now, on to the story!

     Looking back, this past week has been pretty dang unpleasant. My life was centered around being sick, and scheduled in between time to take medicine, time to attempt sleep, and time to doze off while getting not very much done. I got out of the house only twice- once to go to the doctor/ pharmacy, and once on Thursday when I couldn't justify skipping another class. For someone who usually likes to be doing or accomplishing things as much as possible, it was not good times.

Being sick

     To start off with an understatement, I don't take well to being sick. I'm the kind of person who tends to go from perfectly healthy to falling over ill, and I've never been one to take a lot of medication, so my reaction to any kind of drug is to become loopy and out of sorts. In the past, I've tried to just tough it out, but these days, I'm done fighting those fights. I'll save my energy for something that really needs it.

     This past Sunday saw me being sniffly and generally blah. I put it down to the nasty weather of the first week of school, took some sudafed, and went to bed. By Monday morning, I looked sufficiently horrible that I got sent home from work before I could spread whatever I had to everyone else. More sudafed, tea, hot bath, tried to go to bed early. I ended up staring at the wall all night, as the sinus infection started crawling down into my lungs and making my life miserable. I got up long enough to write letters to my professors asking to be excused from class, and tried for another couple hours to fall asleep, to no avail.